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Individualism and Collectivism 

THE PRIMARY CAUSES OF THE 
EUROPEAN CONFLICT 



ADDRESS 



BY 



HON. FRED DUMONT SMITH 



Before the Fortieth Annual Meeting of the Kansas 

State Historical Society, October 19, 1915, 

Memorial Building, Topeka, Kan. 



KANSAS 
STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

WILLIAM E. CONNELLEY 

Secretary 



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KANSAS STATE PRINTING PLANT. 

W. R. Smith, State Printer. 

TOPEKA. 1915. 

''-1543 



D. of D. 

JAN 3 1918 



ADDRESS 



BY 

HON. FRED DUMONT SMITH, 

Before the Fortieth Annual Meeting of the Kansas State His- 
torical Society, October 19, 1915, Memorial 
Building, Topeka, Kansas. 



Ladies and Gentlemen : When your secretary, Mr. 
Connelley, drafted me, the other day, as a substitute* 
for Henry Allen — believe me, not an easy task — I 
asked him what I was expected to talk about. He sug- 
gested Kansas, but I said to him that I had been talking 
about Kansas for about thirty years and had said 
everything about ner, good or bad, that I could think 
of. I have banned her and blessed her, praised her 
and cursed her, and everything that I have said about 
her was true, for such is our beloved state that the 
wildest eulogy or the bitterest abuse of this year may 
become the commonplaces of next year's statistics. 
He told me that politics is barred, for which I am 
thankful. If there is one subject on which I am pro- 
foundly indifferent it is politics. I do not care whether 
the tariff on beans is two cents ad valorem or five cents 
a pound. I do not even care whether the next Repub- 
lican candidate for President is Weeks, of Massachu- 
setts, or W. R. Stubbs, of Lawrence — and I submit to 
you that human indifference could go no farther than 
that. So the subject w^as left to my choice. 

A few years ago I retired from the world — not ex- 
actly to a cell, but to a law office — and for four years I 
have never raised my voice in public except to a jury 
or to a judge, and if I shall fail to collect and present in 

* Hon. Henry J. Allen was to deliver the annual address, but was called to 
New York to take part in the campaign for woman suffrage in that state. The 
secretary then drafted Mr. Smith. 



a logical way the facts I desire to to-night I may per- 
haps be excused. 

In my retirement a friend occasionally sends me a 
book. My friends are not like the chorus girl who 
wanted to give the leading lady a present and was in 
doubt. She asked another girl, who said : ''Well, give 
her a book." "My Lord !" said the first girl, ''she's got 
a book now." 

So the other day a friend of mine sent me "Germany 
and England," being a series of lectures delivered by 
Professor Cramb, of Queen's College, London, in Feb- 
ruary, 1913. The author did not live even to revise his 
work, and the lectures come to us as they were deliv- 
ered, without notes. The book is remarkable for the 
exaltation of its style, but still more remarkable as a 
prophecy. At a time when the Balkan war had been 
settled and the peace of Europe seemed assured for a 
generation, when no Englishman in public life believed 
that there would ever be a war with Germany, at least 
for years. Professor Cramb predicted the war; that it 
would come speedily ; that it would be the greatest war 
the world had ever seen, and that in its last analysis it 
would be a war not between Germany and France, and 
Germany and Russia, so much as a war between Ger- 
many and England, and he tells why in the most lumi- 
nous way. 

England has grasped all of the habitable portions of 
the globe that could be secured for colonies. Her 
great possessions encircle the earth, so that to-day her 
English-speaking colonies almost equal the mother 
country in population, and she governs two-fifths of 
the earth's surface and one-fourth of its population. 
Germany, seeking an outlet for the overflow of her 
population, seeking the mastery of the seas, is con- 
fronted and thwarted everywhere by England. Hence 



the professor concluded that war between these two 
great powers for the ultimate headship of the civilized 
world was inevitable. Final mastery by either one 
may or may not come, but in its last analysis this con- 
flict means something more than the acquisition of ter- 
ritory. It is the final test of two great systems of 
government and society — the collective and the indi- 
vidualist. 

It is not only curious that this great world war 
should be waged by the two main branches of the Teu- 
tonic race, but it is still more curious that these two 
families of the same blood and of close kinship should 
have so developed, in their fifteen hundred years of 
separation, two systems so opposed, so antagonistic 
that they constitute the poles of human government. 

Before tracing the reasons for this divergence of 
ideals it may be well to define what we mean when we 
speak of individualism and collectivism. You hear a 
great deal now of the German word Kulter, which 
means something quite different from the English 
word culture. The German word represents their ideal 
of collectivism. It means the whole German plan of 
society, the foundation, the corner stone and super- 
structure of the German state. With them the indi- 
vidual is nothing; the state is everything. An indi- 
vidual is a mere cog in the great machinery of the 
state. All individual initiative, all personal liberty, 
all personal choice or desire is subordinated to the col- 
lective spirit, to the despotic control of the state. 
While with the English, as with us, the state is merely 
a collection of individuals, and, as I shall endeavor to 
show you later, nowhere in the world has there been 
as lofty an ideal of individual freedom of government 
by law, of justice, as the English-speaking race has 
developed. 



It may be worth while, then, inasmuch as to-day we 
confront in this country a contest between these two 
ideals, to trace the growth of these two systems ; espe- 
cially so when there seems such confusion of ideas re- 
garding the subject among men highly placed. Pro- 
fessor Munsterberg, of Harvard, lately announced that 
the German immigrants came to this country to impose 
upon this country the German ideals and the German 
Kulter. Mr. Barnes, of New York, one of those pro- 
gressives who views with alarm any legislative inno- 
vation later than the Mosaic code, responded to this 
with the charge that German collectivism would bring 
this country to anarchy. Inasmuch as anarchy is no 
government, and collectivism is all government, one 
may see how confusedly Mr. Barnes discusses this 
great question. The other day Senator Beveridge made 
the astounding discovery that the end of this war 
would see a great development of collectivism in 
Europe along democratic lines. Inasmuch as collec- 
tivism presupposes an autocratic government, we see 
that Mr. Beveridge is as far at sea as Mr. Barnes. So 
it may be worth while to go back and trace the growth 
of these two great branches of the Teutonic family and 
ascertain, if we can, why the one developed on the one 
path and the other followed another totally different. 

As you are all aware, Europe was settled by three 
successive waves of immigration. The first great wave 
was the Celts ; the second, the Teutonic ; the third, the 
Slav. We do not know this from recorded history. 
We learn it from that imperishable thing, the lan- 
guage of these three stocks. We not only learn the 
identity of the different branches of these families, but 
we may trace their place of common origin somewhere 
on the slopes of the Caucasus and the central table- 
lands of Asia. We may trace there the habits, the oc- 



cupations, and even the sociology, of the Aryan race 
before it separated into these three great families. 
The Celts were pushed by the successive v^aves of im- 
migration into Brittany and the British Isles. The 
German wave fairly spent itself on the left bank of the 
Rhine. The first glimpse we find of the Germans is 
when the Romans came in contact with them. We say 
in contact, for Rome never conquered the Germans. 
Caesar built a bridge across the Rhine, but never oc- 
cupied the country. Varrus lost his legions there, and 
although Rome spread her arms and civilization over 
everything w^est of the Rhine and over nearly all of 
Britain, the Germans remained unconquered and un- 
touched by her influence. These Germans, as we see 
them in the pages of the Roman historians, were the 
boldest, freest, most individual race that the world 
has ever known. The headship of the tribe or clan, 
whether chief or king, was an office, not a property. 
Power was not hereditary, but elective. Every free 
man and every free woman participated in the affairs 
of the government, helped make and wage w^ar, and 
helped frame the peace that followed. Another curious 
thing : Nowhere else until that age, nor indeed for two 
thousand years afterwards, was woman's place as lofty 
as among the Germans. She stood shoulder to shoul- 
der with her husband, his copartner in all the things of 
life. And when we, the other day, conferred suffrage 
upon woman, we but restored her to that position 
which she held in the Cimbric forests two thousand 
years ago. 

Certain families of this great Teutonic race, in 446, 
crossed the narrow seas and conquered Britain, after 
Rome, menaced at home, was compelled to withdraw 
her legions. This conflict differed from every one 
made by the Germanic tribes, the Goths, the Vandals, 



8 

the Visigoths and others. These last, while they con- 
quered France, Spain, Italy and North Africa, were 
themselves conquered by those whom they subdued. 
They adopted the arts and customs and eventually the 
effeminacy of their subjects, and gradually melted into 
the nationalities that they had overcome. Not so with 
the conquest of the Britains. There the Celtic inhab- 
itants were either exterminated or driven into the 
mountain fastnesses of Wales and Scotland. This Ger- 
manic blood refused to mingle with any other, but 
flowed on undiluted, so pure that, in effect, the German 
to-day on the Rhine is not more German in blood than 
the Englishman of London. Nor would they adopt 
any of the institutions of the conquered, but brought 
with them their form of government, their religion 
and tribal customs. 

Under the pressure of war the kingship gradually 
became more or less hereditary, but it was a loose 
heredity, frequently set aside by the people. The Folk- 
mote gradually ceased to pass laws, but its approval of 
the edicts of the king was frequently sought. The 
Wittenagamote, or council of the elders, continued to 
surround the king with their advice and counsel, but 
above all the Anglo-Saxons continued to be free men, 
and their government was a government of law and 
not of arbitrary power. The jury system gradually 
developed into something like its present form, and no 
man could be condemned except by the judgment of his 
fellows. 

When the Normans conquered England a despotism 
was imposed upon the conquered country for a time; 
but the Normans, themselves of German blood, speedily 
melted into the mass of English people, and within 
two centuries the last sign of division between Norman 
and Saxon had disappeared. The national power that 



9 

conquered King John and extorted the Great Charter 
was led by Walter Fitz-Hugh, a Norman, the Arch- 
bishop of York, and a Saxon. It is of profound inter- 
est that the demand for the Great Charter of the Eng- 
lish liberties was not a demand for something new and 
unknown. The demand was for "the laws of Edward 
the Confessor." It was a return to the Anglo-Saxon 
government of law and individual liberty, and when 
King John solemnly promised that he would not "send 
upon, disseize or banish any man without the judgment 
of his peers" he simply formulated in writing Anglo- 
Saxon law and custom that had existed for more than 
a thousand years. From that time, protected by its 
island isolation, the English continued to develop a 
government of individualism and the protection of the 
liberty of the citizen. 

Edmund Burke, in one of his sublime speeches, de- 
clared that the whole state and power of England, its 
king, lords and commons, its army and navy, were es- 
tablished and maintained for the sole purpose of get- 
ting twelve honest men into the jury box. In other 
words, this great structure of government was simply 
for the purpose of giving the English people a govern- 
ment of law. Again, Burke, in describing the ideal of 
English justice, declared that it was such that it shall 
protect the liberty and life of the humblest Hindu on 
the banks of the Ganges as completely as the wealthi- 
est nobleman of England in his palace on the Thames. 

It was this individualism, this free, robust independ- 
ence of thought and speech, together with its capacity 
for self-government developed and trained by the Eng- 
lish constitution, that made the Anglo-Saxon the great- 
est colonizer that the world has ever seen. In a foreign 
land they developed their governing institutions on the 
same model as the mother country. Whether on the 



10 

James, the Plymouth Rock, in the wilds of Canada or 
of Australia, the free-born Englishman was his own 
master and governed himself. Those who formed our 
constitution were Englishmen, and Englishmen of a 
generation who were the greatest politicians that the 
world has ever seen. I do not speak of politics here in 
the sense of electing a county commissioner and the 
alloting of the county printing, but in the broader sense 
of state building and government. And the eighteenth 
century had produced the greatest masters of the sci- 
ence of government that either England or America 
has ever seen. These Englishmen who framed the 
American constitution perceived with astounding clear- 
ness of vision that the two great forces of the universe 
must be balanced and controlled in any successful gov- 
ernment. In the cosmos the centrifugal force which 
holds the planetary system together is exactly balanced 
by the centripetal force which keeps the planets from 
plunging into the sun, and the balance of these two 
forces preserves the harmonious movement of the sys- 
tem. So in human society, the centrifugal force which 
tends towards despotism must be balanced by the cen- 
tripetal force which runs towards anarchy and de- 
struction. One or the other of these forces had there- 
tofore destroyed every republic that the world had 
known. Our forefathers devised the federal plan — a 
true planetary system — the centrifugal force of the 
federal government balanced by the centripetal force 
of the separate states, the states receiving from the 
central sun, the national government, their due propor- 
tion of power, their strength for protection, a common 
bond uniting all of them, but preserving their individ- 
ual freedom, their individual existence, strong enough 
to prevent the central government from ever becoming 
a despotism. This balance, this check and counter- 



u 

check, have worked so wonderfully for 125 years, have 
so built up this country in power and glory while still 
preserving its freedom, have so fostered the spirit of 
individual liberty in America while maintaining a gov- 
ernment of law and order, that he who would disturb 
this perfect balance — he who would either increase or 
diminish the centrifugal power of the federal govern- 
ment or the centripetal power of the state government ; 
he who would change the representative principle, by 
which alone this balance can be maintained, into a pure 
democracy which would speedily destroy it — should 
stop and consider the laws of the universe and the his- 
tory of the world. 

Fifteen hundred years have elapsed since the Teu- 
tonic race separated into its two principal families. 
Those who remained behind suffered a far different 
fate from those who occupied the island fastness of 
Great Britain. Penned in between the Rhine, the 
Vistula and the Baltic, with scarcely an outlet to the 
open sea, surrounded by Frank, Hun, Slav and Swede, 
Germany has been the battle ground of Europe. At 
times, under the Hohenstaufen and the Ottonides, there 
was a semblance of German unity. Austria seized for 
a time the hegemony of the German race and estab- 
lished a mockery of the power of the Caesars — "The 
Holy Roman Empire," which, as Voltaire says, was 
neither holy, Roman nor an empire. In truth it was a 
collection of fragments loosely held together by com- 
mon interest, which Metternich well described when he 
said that Germany was merely "a geographical expres- 
sion." Civil wars, mostly religious, desolated its fields 
and destroyed its cities. It was the plaything of Euro- 
pean politics. States were established and destroyed, 
confederacies formed and dissolved, not by the will of 
the German people, but by foreign rulers. Out of the 



12 

ruck of petty German states Prussia finally emerged, 
and the Great Elector made himself the King of 
Prussia. The wars of Frederick the Great established 
the position of the Hohenzollerns, who have been, 
taken for all and all, the greatest succession of mon- 
archs that Europe has ever seen. When Napoleon 
broke the power of Prussia, Germany was again 
plunged into anarchy; but out of the uprising against 
Napoleon grew the future greatness of Prussia, the 
Prussian army system, and, in effect, that wonderful 
machinery that we know to-day as the German govern- 
ment. So pressed upon on every side, trampled by the 
feet of warring nations, conquered by Hun and Slav 
and Swede and Frank, the Germanic people were in- 
evitably compelled to submit to a despotic form of gov- 
ernment. They realized that the collective spirit could 
alone save Germany alive. They had at their doors an 
object lesson of individualism carried too far. Poland, 
once the greatest monarchy in Europe, perished and 
its people were enslaved because of the lack of the col- 
lective spirit. The great Germans of the nineteenth 
century determined that Germany, in order to be free, 
must be strong and great. And the German people, 
with the memory of their terrible past before them, 
willingly consented to give up their individualism and 
to bend every energy to the molding of a state powerful 
enough to protect its borders and its own civilization. 
It is well-nigh impossible for any of us to understand 
with what bitterness the Germans look back on their 
past, when the Hungarian army under Tilly sacked 
their cities, when the Swedish armies under Gustavus 
dictated their policies, when as feeble a monarch as 
Louis the Fifteenth of France desolated the Palatinate, 
when their sons perished upon the Steppes of Russia, 
dragged at the chariot wheels of Napoleon, mere pawns 



13 

in the game of conquest that he was playing. Small 
wonder that they have sworn that, no matter what the 
sacrifice, never again shall German soil be desecrated 
by a foreign enemy if the German people, by whatever 
sacrifice, may prevent it. It is this outside pressure 
that has cemented the German character into that solid 
and enduring fabric of government that is to-day hold- 
ing its own against all Europe. 

It is this outside pressure and past humiliations that 
are the reasons for German collectivism, just as the 
freedom from outside influences and from foreign in- 
vasion has permitted the Anglo-Saxon individualism to 
reach its zenith. It can not be doubted that individual- 
ism is the natural, the wholesome and the best develop- 
ment of human nature. German collectivism is arti- 
ficial, unnatural, and it is submitted to by the German 
people by force of necessity. That its leading writers 
set it forth as an ideal is not strange. The whole 
power of the monarchy, its government and its army is 
devoted to this ideal, and its publicists must preach 
and enforce this ideal or be silent. 

As a test of the two systems it is well to remark that 
the collective system in Germany has produced no men 
of the first rank in art or literature. Goethe, Kant and 
Schiller have had no successors. Wagner was a prod- 
uct of the earlier individualism. Again, because of this 
collectivism, Germany has made a failure of every one 
of her colonizing experiments, while England has 
spread her colonies over all the habitable world, so that 
Webster described her as **that great power whose 
military posts encircle the globe, whose morning drum- 
beats, following the sun and keeping company with the 
hours, girdle the earth with one continuous and un- 
broken strain of England's military airs." Germany 
had at the outbreak of the war a few handmade, home- 



14 

protected colonies, each a complete failure. Separated 
from the home government, from the daily and hourly 
control and direction of an invisible central power, 
Germany's colonies have always failed. Hand in hand 
with the growth of German military power, under the 
collective system, has grown her material prosperity. 
While she has constructed the first army of the world 
and a navy second only to England, she is almost 
abreast with England in manufactures and in the race 
for the world's markets. Nor has there ever been any- 
where on earth as many well-fed and well-clothed peo- 
ple under one flag, with as small a percentage of pov- 
erty, illiteracy or crime. It is a necessity of the col- 
lective system, where each is but a cog in the great 
machine, that each cog must be sedulously guarded and 
cared for, and this Germany has done with all of her 
people. On the other hand, England has discovered 
that too rank a growth of individualism becomes a 
crime. She has discovered, as we have discovered in 
this country, that to leave each individual entirely free 
is to permit the strong to prey upon the weak ; to per- 
mit the man of first-rate capacity to exploit those of 
lower intelligence, and a form of collectivism, such as 
labor unions, coupled with child-labor laws and the 
like, has grown and is growing with accelerated speed 
every year. That is the conflict between collectivism 
and individualism that is going on in this country 
to-day and which Mr. Barnes says can not continue 
without endangering the existence of our government. 
A growing public conscience in this country has de- 
manded better protection for the poor, the unfortunate 
and unfit. This is a moral, a social collectivism and 
has only a faint resemblance to the German Kulter. 
This collectivism might proceed, and will doubtless pro- 
ceed, much farther than it has without in any wise im- 



15 

pairing the form of government handed down to us. 
With that form of collectivism I am heartily in sym- 
pathy. With each moral reform that lessens the un- 
bridled power of the strong in order to protect the 
weak and helpless every man of heart and feeling 
should sympathize. Whenever this form of collec- 
tivism undertakes to disturb the foundations of our 
government, upon which the future of this country de- 
pends, when it assaults the safeguards that have pro- 
tected the liberty of the individual, given us internal 
coherence and strength, and safety abroad, for one I 
must recoil. I can not follow upon that path — call me 
standpatter or what you will. For myself I perceive a 
clear line of demarcation between moral and social col- 
lectivism, and governmental and military collectivism. 
I am not willing, either, to abandon that individualism 
that has alone of all the races of the world success- 
fully established and maintained self-government ; that 
has made of England for five hundred years a beacon 
light of progress, the shelter of the oppressed of every 
race, the hope of the downtrodden nations throughout 
the world. I am not willing to abandon that individual- 
ism that has conquered the seven seas and to-day holds 
absolute domain over them ; that has made the Anglo- 
Saxon race the paramount race of the world ; that has 
conquered and to-day holds the fairest portions of the 
globe, holds them free and self-governing. I am not 
willing to abandon that individualism that has starred 
the English-speaking sky with names of imperishable 
glory. 

Whatever may be the result of this war, I am not 
afraid of world dominion by Germany or any other 
race. Power that is racial, that springs from the soil, 
founded upon nationality, has endured and will endure ; 
power that is imposed by an alien race upon others 



16 021 547 962 6 

bears within itself the seeds of decay. The history of 
the world from Alexander to Napoleon demonstrates it. 
There never has been and there never will be any 
world-conquering race. Whether in the material con- 
flict that now desolates Europe, Germany or England 
shall be the winner, neither will dominate the world. 
The great problem for us in this day of change, of 
shifting alterations of public feeling, emotions and con- 
victions, is to hold true to the governmental ideals that 
have proven themselves. We may experiment with so- 
ciology, but we dare not experiment with the founda- 
tions of the temple. 



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